Beckett's Birthright

“Truth to tell, he don’t know no more about her than he has to. Dang shame, if you ask me, but he ain’t about to change his spots just ’cause he’s a sick man.”

The conversation turned in another direction then. Burke Jackson’s health. It was Shem’s opinion—Eli wasn’t entirely sure he was joking—that the man was being slowly poisoned by that evil old woman’s foul cooking. From what Eli had seen and heard, Jackson’s housekeeper was a slovenly woman who should have been fired years ago.

“That woman can sour a pan o’ milk just by looking at it.”

“What about the daughter? Can’t she step in?”

The old man removed his hat and scratched his bald, freckled head. “Burke won’t listen to her. Never did, not since she was a little thing, sweet as cane and wantin’ to please. No, sir, that man’s miserable and he’s gonna make dang sure ever’body else is just as miserable.”

Eli had trouble picturing Lilah Jackson as a little thing fitting Shem’s description. Whatever she was up to, he didn’t have time to oversee her as well as the rest of Jackson’s operation, even if he’d been so inclined. Spring was a busy time. But then, so was fall. In fact, if there was a slack time on a farm, he had yet to discover it.

Right now there was the first haying and late planting to oversee, not to mention ongoing repairs and improvements. The new crop of calves should have been culled more than a month ago, but due to both the weather and a shortage of manpower, they were running considerably behind. Still to be done was castrating and hair-branding. It was a noisy, dirty business, one he wasn’t looking forward to. Streak, Mickey and a few more men would do the actual work, but Eli was responsible. He’d once worked briefly on a ranch where some numbskull had mistaken his orders, turned the culls out to pasture and made steers of what would have been five valuable bulls.

An hour later Eli interviewed the new men and hired all three. One was the youngest son of a dairy farmer—some experience there. Another was a trapper from up in the mountains, skills that might come in handy if the damned groundhogs didn’t stop digging holes in the pastures. He’d seen more than one horse lost that way.

It was the third man who interested him the most, however. Ace Glover claimed to be a professional gambler in a Midwestern casino before losing the three middle fingers on his card-dealing hand.

“Mind telling me why you applied for work on a cattle farm?”

“A man’s got to eat,” Ace Glover said with a shrug. “I tried dealing left-handed. Tried wearing a glove with plugged fingers.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t the same. Too distracting. Eventually I worked my way east, trying a number of different lines of work. I worked on a gambling boat out of Tampa for a couple of weeks. Big, fancy side-wheeler. Now there’s a line of work I’d be very good at. Trouble is, even tied up in port I got so sick I couldn’t look at a glass of water without wanting to throw up.”

Eli shook his head in commiseration. “You know anything at all about farming?”

“No, but I’m a quick study. I can learn.”

“Know anything about livestock?”

“Like I said, I can learn.”

Eli tipped back his chair, regarding the applicant with a measuring look. The man’s suit had once been expensive, but it was starting to take on the shine of too much wear. Eli had learned about such things from Lance—hell, he even knew how to take the shine off good serge, come to that. Not that he’d ever bothered.

Not that he even owned a serge suit. Levi’s and leather were good enough for the life he led.

Neither man spoke as each measured the other. Ace Glover might not know a damn thing about cattle, but Eli suspected he was shrewd, probably highly intelligent. Like most gamblers, he’d be a good judge of men, which could be a decided asset on a spread with as big a turnover as the Bar J.

Glover crossed his legs. To all appearances, he was totally relaxed, but Eli had had some experience when it came to reading men, too.

He waited, knowing he had the advantage.

Feeling almost ashamed to use that advantage when a man had had a long run of bad luck, as Glover obviously had.

The gambler broke first. “I’ve got a good brain, but there’s a limit on what I can do with my hands. I’ve heard farming’s not an easy job, but I was hoping…” With a wintry smile, he let it rest.

“You heard right. You sure you want to tackle it?”

“A man has to eat,” Ace repeated. “Of course, if I were a fisherman, that wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, the last thing in the world I felt like doing during my two weeks in the Gulf of Mexico was eating.” Both men chuckled, which gave Eli the opening he’d been looking for.

“I’ve heard it said that professional gambling can be almost as risky as farming. Maybe not as physically demanding, but I’ve heard it can turn a man’s hair white overnight. You ever hear of anything like that?”

Glover pursed his lips under a pencil-thin mustache. He looked down at shoes that were long past their prime, but still reflected a shine. “Matter of fact, there was this fellow I met once…” Eli’s fingers tightened around the pencil he held. “Man swore he’d turned white overnight when some hayseed—nothing personal, Mr. Chandler—pulled a gun on him and shot the cards right out of his hand.”

Eli’s body absorbed the jolt of excitement that streaked through him like a lightning bolt. He’d had leads before. Dozens of them, but no matter how promising they seemed in the beginning, few of them had panned out.

He nodded to Glover’s hand and lifted an eyebrow.

The gambler laughed and shook his head. “They weren’t shot off, if that’s what you mean. I tangled with one of these newfangled automobiles. Dangerous machines, I’m telling you. I’ll stick to horses.”

“Smart man. No point in going gray before your time.” The newcomer’s hair was patent-leather black, and just as shiny.

“The man I mentioned—I don’t recall his name, but he had a remarkable streak of snow-white hair. Just a streak, mind you.” He touched his head just to the left of the center part. “Put a man in mind of a skunk.”

Eli eased out the breath he’d been holding, not showing by so much as a twitch the excitement that was beginning to build. This was the first solid lead he’d had in months. There was always the possibility that the man he’d been trailing was playing games, sending Glover in to taunt him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something like that. Once in Knoxville, when Eli had casually asked after a gambler with a streak of white hair, he’d been given an envelope.

“Man came through here day before yesterday. Said you might be wantin’ to know his whereabouts. Said to give you this here letter. Feels like they might be some money in it.”

He’d waited until he was outside to open the envelope. Cat and mouse wasn’t a game he’d ever liked, but when he played it, he’d always been the cat. The hunter.

When the poker chip with a white streak painted across the middle had fallen out into his palm, he’d gone cold with rage.

And then hot with determination.

Now he was neither.

But he was still the hunter.

Realistically, Eli no longer held out much hope for Rosemary. God alone knew what she’d been forced to endure. But he was on the right track, he was sure of it. When he’d first set out nearly two years ago he’d known nothing more about the man who had burned his home and kidnapped the woman he’d promised to marry other than that he had a streak of white hair. Now he knew that the man was sometimes called Chips. He knew how he dressed, what he liked to eat and drink, and how he made his living. Most of the information had been picked up in saloons, some in jailhouses and one gem—the bit that had sent him to this particular region, he’d overheard in a whorehouse in Tennessee where the ladies of the evening had been discussing a cheapskate with a polecat stripe, who had professed to being on his way to claim his stepfather’s estate in the city of Durham in North Carolina. The creep had escaped through a window without paying for services rendered.

The man called Chips might enjoy tweaking the lion’s tail, but he was a liar and a scoundrel. Sooner or later his luck would run out, and when it did, Eli would be there.

There was only one thing that bothered him. The crime of kidnapping didn’t seem to fit the image of a professional gambler. Not even a lying, cheating gambler. That was the part that had always puzzled him as he’d studied over all the old cases during his stints as a lawman.

But then, one thing he had learned from experience was that people rarely fit into a neat pattern. Who would have thought that a man who owned the biggest, most prosperous cattle operation in the state of North Carolina would hide out in his house like a hermit and put up with a slovenly female who couldn’t cook any better than she could clean house?

And who would have expected that the same man’s daughter, who was as tall and as tough as any man, would have a mole at one corner of her mouth that tempted a man to lick it off?

The down-on-his-luck gambler stirred, drawing Eli’s attention back to the task at hand. “You don’t know farming. You don’t know cattle. Tell me, why did you apply for work here? What does a man like you have to offer?”

“As I said, my brain. I’m good with numbers, I have a retentive memory, and I don’t mind sitting for long hours.” He grinned again, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor. “I applied for work at a bank just yesterday. My resume didn’t appear to impress them.”

Tilting his chair, Eli studied the man before him. A seven-fingered gambler wouldn’t be worth a dip of snuff working cattle, but Eli could use a hand with the books.

Glover said, “You seem interested in this fellow I mentioned.”

“Call it a study of human nature. I guess you’ve heard there’s a pretty large turnover here. Jackson pays the lowest wages he can get by with, which means I have to check out any man applying for work to see why he wants to work at the Bar J instead of a place that pays better.”

“Makes sense. Although there’s not a whole lot of hiring going on these days unless a man wants to move to a mill town and work in a factory.” His expression made clear his opinion of that option.

Eli let it simmer. No point in pushing too hard. Glover struck him as a man who played them close to his vest.

The mental sparring continued. Eli had already made up his mind to hire the man, but it suited him to prolong the interview.

Glover said, “If you’re considering hiring me to work on the books, don’t you need to know if I’m honest?”

“Are you?”

“Would I tell you if I weren’t?” An odd moment of understanding seemed to pass between the two men. “But yeah, I am. When I can afford to be,” the newcomer replied.

“That’s honest enough for me,” Eli said dryly. He brought the front legs of his chair down with a quiet thump. “The job’s yours if you want it. We’ll start in the office and see what develops. Like I said, the pay’s not great, but the bunkhouse is clean and the food’s exceptional. Lead your horse around to the feedlot and come back by the office once you’re settled in.”

For several minutes after Glover left, Eli allowed his mind to range freely. Impressions, instinct and random thoughts all merged together. And then a rare smile lightened his eyes without ever touching his lips.

He’d picked up the scent again. Sooner or later something would connect, and when it did, he would need to be ready to move. He might not have a man in place to take over the management, but if Ace worked out, then with the help of Streak and Shem, Jackson wouldn’t be left in the lurch.

Chapter Four

Man, that is one mean woman.” Pete, one of the new men, spoke almost admiringly as they watched the boss’s daughter march back across the clearing that was ringed by the main house, the big barn and the cook-shack, the other outbuildings scattered closer to the back lane.

Lilah had gone to the cookshack to deliver a message from her father. Hesitating in the doorway, she had scanned the noisy, comfortable room with its mingled aromas of pork barbecue, fried onions and tobacco. Locating her target, she took aim and fired. “My father wants to see you.” She pointed at Eli.

He laid down his fork, “May I finish my supper?”

“Now.”

Eli had learned self-control in a far tougher school than the Bar J, having grown up with a domineering grandfather and a drunkard for a father. Lacking, for the most part, a woman’s softening influence, it had been a matter of survival. He took his time rising. Placing his utensils across his plate, he watched Lilah’s retreating figure while the other men waited to see his reaction.

What the hell was Jackson thinking of, using his daughter as a messenger? He could have sent the old woman. He could have come himself, for that matter. Appearances to the contrary, Jackson had not yet lost the use of his short, bowed legs.

“Save my dessert for me, will you?” he said quietly, reaching for his hat.

“Better you than me,” Mickey said feelingly.

“They say she’s got a worser temper then her old man,” said one of the more recent hires.

“Something don’t set right with her, she’ll sure enough let you know about it. I like the ladies, but damned if I’d want to tangle with that one, even if she was giving it away.” Arnold, the carpenter-blacksmith shook his head.

Mickey Lane leaned forward, his animated face alight. “You ever hear her cuss? Man, she can evermore set fire to the bushes.”

Eli was on the point of reprimanding the young brush roper when Streak took matters in hand. Looking at first one man and then another until he had surveyed the entire gathering, he said quietly, “Y’all don’t got no call to talk about a lady thataway. Don’t do it n’more, y’hear?”

On his way out the door, Eli glanced back at the man he had quickly come to respect. An exceedingly homely man, Streak, christened Thomas O’Neal some twenty-nine years ago and called Streak o’ Lean for as long as anyone could remember, had been here longer than any other member of the crew except for Shem.

The day was Wednesday, unless Eli had missed a few days on his calendar. He always reported on Fridays. Searching his mind, he tried to think of anything he’d done lately that might have warranted the peremptory summons.

The corn was finally in the ground. Late, but that was hardly his fault. The haying was well underway and the tally-branding was scheduled to start early next week, probably on Monday if they got the chute repaired by then.

Eli took his time crossing the yard. The housekeeper, Pearly May, yanked open the door and glared at him. Without thinking, he wiped his feet off on the filthy scrap of rug on the front porch. Not that it would have made much difference if he’d tracked in half the mud in Orange County. He didn’t know what the woman did to earn her keep, but it sure as hell wasn’t floor scrubbing. As for her cooking, the less said, the better. He’d had the dubious privilege of taking supper at the Jackson’s table. They’d been served underboiled chicken, over-boiled cabbage and biscuits that might’ve won the war for the South if they’d been used as ammunition.

“In there,” the housekeeper snapped, jerking her head in the general direction of the big walnut-paneled front room.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She snorted. Eli grinned and entered the lion’s den. “You don’t want nothing to drink, do you?” she growled.

He was tempted to say yes, just to see how she would react. “Thank you kindly, Miss Pearly May, I just finished supper.”

Without another word she stalked off down the wide hall, smelling of sweat, onions and vanilla extract. God knows why Jackson kept her around. She was probably the only woman who could put up with his cantankerousness. He might be a smart man, but when it came to charm, Burke Jackson couldn’t charm his way out of a gopher hole.

Of Lilah Jackson, there was no sign. Evidently, her duty was finished once she’d delivered the message. Eli entered the room and nodded to his employer, aware once again of the overpowering smell composed of liniment and something that smelled a lot like tobacco. Jackson had been told to throw away his cigars. Whether or not he had remained to be seen.

If the quick grimace could be interpreted as a smile, Jackson was in an unusually genial mood. “Heard you put a new man onto the books.” The smile disappeared as he leveled the charge at point-blank range. “What you got to say about that?”

Since he hadn’t been invited to sit, Eli leaned against a dusty credenza. “You heard right.”

“That’s what I hired you for. You ain’t up to the job, say so.”

“Ace is better with numbers than I am. I’m starting him on the monthly accounts, under my supervision. If things work well enough I’ll extend his responsibilities. We’re shorthanded, Jackson. I can’t be in the office and out checking up on the new hands at the same time. Maybe if we increased the pay a few dollars, we’d get some competent men and I wouldn’t have to spend so much time keeping behind them.”

“I pay ’em what they’re worth.”

“And get what you pay for.”

“Shem did all that and still kept the books.”

“Shem’s eyesight has been bothering him.” Eli wouldn’t say more than that. Jackson had to know that the old man had allowed things to slide for so long that it had taken Eli weeks to sort things out. In some cases, all he could do was cut his losses and start fresh. “Most operations this size hire a bookkeeper, a herd manager and a general manager.”

“How many spreads you worked on?”

“I believe we went over this before I was hired.”

“Wild West cattle. Spanish stock, all bones, horns and gristle. What d’you think of my herd?”

Eli banked the coals of anger. Jackson was working toward a point. He would get there in his own time. Eli could afford to be patient. He had a new lead; he could move on anytime, but it suited him better to wait until he’d picked up a bit more information. It would be best if he could do it without arousing too much interest, but if weeks passed and he learned nothing more, he might just have to lean on Glover a bit to improve his memory.

First, though, he needed to know whether or not he could trust him. Giving him a set of books to work on was a test. Eli fully intended to go over every single entry and keep his own tally.

The older man, swallowed up by a king-size chair and ottoman, studied him from beneath bushy white brows. Burke Jackson couldn’t be much more than fifty, yet he looked to be at least twenty years older.

“Well? I asked you a question, boy. Speak up.”

“It’s good stock. It’ll bring top prices, especially as you can freight it to market directly instead of having to drive it a hundred or so miles to the nearest railhead.”

“What d’you think o’ my daughter?”

Eli cleared his throat. Talk about coming out of left field. “Your daughter? Well, uh—” Definitely more than bones, horns and gristle, although he didn’t think the old man would appreciate the comparison. “She rides well.”

“Ha! Rides like a damned man. I spent a fortune sending her to that fancy girls’ school and what do I get back? A bossy female that dresses like a man and sneaks around behind my back, stealing food out of the kitchen to feed a pack of poachers!”

That one, he wasn’t about to touch. Poachers? Shem evidently knew where she went several times a week. If there was a problem he’d have reported it, either to Eli or to Jackson himself.

“As to that, I couldn’t say.” He was wondering how to end the conversation and escape. Wondering why he’d been summoned in the first place. He’d actually taken a step toward the door when the man seated in the leather-covered chair, a lap robe spread over his short legs even though the weather felt more like June than early May—spoke again.

“I’m dying, you know.”

Eli dropped his hat. As Pearly May hadn’t offered to take it and hang it up for him, he’d been holding it ever since he’d arrived. He cleared his throat again. What the hell did a man say to something like that?

“I guess we all are.” A philosopher he wasn’t, but some truths, he’d heard tell, were self-evident.

Jackson uttered a short nasty laugh, which turned into a fit of coughing. Before Eli could decide whether to whack the man on the back or summon help, Lilah burst into the room and demanded to know what in hell’s name he had said to her father to set him off.

“Ma’am, I didn’t—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, you scoundrel, or I’ll tell my father—”

The look on her face was priceless. Eli had no trouble finishing the rest of her accusation. She would tell his father that Eli had followed her when she’d gone out riding?

But then she would have to admit what she’d been up to. Whoever lived in that cabin, poachers or not, he had a feeling Jackson wasn’t supposed to know about it.

So he smiled at her. Jackson already knew. Eli had a feeling there was little that went on around here the man didn’t know.

Tapping her foot, Lilah glared at him.

Jackson looked back and forth from one to the other, a curious expression coming over his flushed face. Outside the window a mockingbird cut loose with a rambling threnody. The familiar scent of cow manure and wildflowers drifted in on the warm, humid air, competing with the acrid smell of the room.

Eli, hat in hand, began edging away. Whatever Jackson was thinking, he didn’t want to hear about it. If he was about to be fired, he’d prefer to postpone it until after he’d had another shot at getting Glover to remember something more specific. At the very least he needed a last name.

It was Jackson who broke the silence. “One thing I’d like to see before I die,” the man said sanctimoniously.

Eli and Lilah turned as one to stare at the older man. “Papa, don’t talk like that,” Lilah said. “You’re not about to die.”

“Shut up, girl. You got no notion of what I’m about to do.”

Eli stepped out into the hall and looked around for Pearly May. The old woman was used to handling him. Must be, else she’d have been fired long before now.

“It’d please me mightily to see my little girl settled down with a husband,” Burke Jackson said wistfully. He coughed again, as if to underline his words.

Lilah was first to react. Eyes widening, breast heaving, she cried, “Your little girl! Why, you wicked, scheming old son of a bitch, don’t you dare try to push me off on another man! You’re damn well stuck with me, whether you like it or not! And whether you know it or not, I’m a damn sight smarter than that son you never had that you keep whining about!”

Eli had never heard any mention of a son, whining or otherwise. He did know when it was time to leave. Less than a minute later he found himself outside the front door staring at a row of grinning cowpokes, elbows and booted feet propped on the rail fence. They had obviously heard every word.

Streak and Shem weren’t among them, but that didn’t keep him from thinking it might not be a bad idea to get out before things got any crazier.

A husband for Delilah? The man would have to be seven feet tall, with brass balls and the hide of a rhino.

Through the open door he could hear raised voices. Hers and his. God knows, that was one argument he didn’t want to get in the middle of. What the devil did the man have against his own daughter? All she’d done was show proper concern. Was that any reason to shout curses at her?

For that matter, why should she be surprised that her father wanted to find her a husband? Any decent man would want to be sure his daughter was secure before he passed away.

Something crashed noisily. Glass, from the sound of it. If he had to guess which one had thrown it, his money would be on Delilah. She had a temper to go with all that red hair, and from the looks of him, Jackson didn’t have the strength to spit more than two feet, much less grab something breakable and throw it.